Pamplona, Without the Bullsh--

There's more to Pamplona than men in scarves fleeing bulls. Explore the other side of this Spanish city, the side that Hemingway fell in love with.

Ever since the publication of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises in 1926, people from all over the world have descended en masse for San Fermin, reserving every room in town far in advance, cramming into the same plazas and the same bars Hemingway wrote about.

Beginning on July 6, the Fiesta San Fermin still goes for nine days of hectic eating, drinking, and bull running (which begins the second day), events that unfold just as Hemingway described them. But here's what the tourists are missing out on: The other 355 days of the year. When the bulls aren't running, Pamplona is a convivial and beautiful small city, considerably more cosmopolitan than in Hemingway's time, but still retaining the charms of historic Navarra and northern Spanish culture, from the 14th-century Gothic cathedral to the Plaza del Toros, next to which is a street named (try to guess!) Paseo Hemingway. Papa certainly left his mark here.

The sleek new look of La Perla Hotel. Photo by Galina Stepanoff-Dargery.

Hemingway's favorite hotel was Gran Hotel La Perla -- it's called La Montoya in Sun Also Rises -- on one corner of the Plaza del Castillo. His favorite room was No. 217, now renumbered as 201. The hotel was just reopened by new owners this past year after a complete renovation, with very modern white rooms and huge wall photos of the days when the novelist wrote about the city. I had a room that overlooked the sun-drenched plaza, across which is the Bar Txoko (sadly, that's been sanitized into a nondescript tourist haunt); at the other end is the Café Iruña, a very large restaurante with art nouveau decor, simple regional cooking, and very sunny outdoor tables. Hemingway frequented both.

The "been-there, seen-that" scene at the tourist-friendly Bar Txoko. Photo by Galina Stepanoff-Dargery.

The bright, festive atmosphere at Café Iruña is matched only by the excellent food there. Photo by Galina Stepanoff-Dargery.

In the downstairs dining room at La Perla, large windows look out onto the street where, at eight o'clock on the mornings of San Fermin, the bulls rumble by, not so much in pursuit of those terrified, white-shirted, red-scarfed crazies but to get the hell out of the streets and back to the relative safety of the bullring.

You can actually have breakfast here at the window and watch the spectacle over coffee and a Spanish omelet. At night, the restaurant at La Perla is one of the best in the city, full of matador memorabilia, including two bull's heads. You nibble on fried olives with a glass of Sherry, then move on to piquillo (peppers stuffed with cod) and drink an Otazu Reserva from Navarra vineyards.

The exterior of Bar Gaucho, home of award-winning tapas. Photo by Galina Stepanoff-Dargery.

The best café in town Bar Gaucho is on Calle Espoz y Mina, right behind the bland Bar Txoko. As it's name would imply, Gaucho is a gregarious place, always packed, always clean, and well-lit. But that's not the draw -- it's their tapas (called pintxos in Spain), which have won many awards in the region.

If you're going to the bullfights, which start around 6:30 in the evening, tapas bars are the best place to catch a nice dinner. If you're a late eater, try the rustic Casa Otano on 5 San Nicolas, a popular, two-story restaurant in the Casco Viejo, just off the Plaza del Castillo. Here you can enjoy a bowl of steaming red beans thick with carrots, cauliflower, and pork rind (sometimes with a few bristles intact), and baked merluza (hake) with a sauce of garlic and onions.

As a nightcap, take a seat on the plaza, drink a few Spanish brandies, and you'll soon realize that Ernest Hemingway greatest gift isn't just his ability to write impactful stories -- it's his robust appetite and being born in a century that allowed him to indulge it. No one traveled more widely or immersed himself so deeply in the culture of a place, picking up the language on the street, so that he could say with certainty, "If a man is making up a story it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is." And you can sit there with your brandy and say to yourself, "Yes, this is just the way Hemingway promised it would be."

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